What are you listening to? The world really needs to know. Volume 8

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Maggie Roche died last year, and her sister put out a nice collection of some of her songs and demos called Where Do I Come From.

Here's one of the demos.

And a Roches song that I've probably posted here many times, but one that still, after hearing it 200 or 300 times over 30 or 40 years, makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up at that one certain point where the skies open up and that pure sound flows down and covers everything in its path.

It's funny that they've come to be known as the Mats, since calling them The Placemats started out as kind of a mocking, minor insult (no relation to a minor poet) that was thrown around whenever someone wanted to talk shit about them.

Then again, I suppose it's foolish to try to insult someone - or a group of someones - who are virtually un-insultable. They are bound to embrace your insult and leave you stranded and insultless.

Not an actual collaboration, a fan (?) mixed together MF DOOM and RZA over this beat. Not sure about the rap parts but thought the beat was killer. Turns out it's a song by Cambodian singer Ros Serey Sothea.

Art should be its own hammer.

And a Roches song that I've probably posted here many times, but one that still, after hearing it 200 or 300 times over 30 or 40 years, makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up at that one certain point where the skies open up and that pure sound flows down and covers everything in its path.

Starting January 1, I posted a daily song by David Bowie as a countdown to his death on Jan 10 at my fb-profile.

Here's the playlist:
- 9 days left: CHANGES (Live October 1999, France)
- 8 days left: ZIGGY STARDUST (Live 1972)
[in the comments: a link to a spider (from Mars?), that's actually been named after Bowie]
[in a later comment: David Bowie interview about Ziggy]
- 7 days left: CHINA GIRL (Live 2009 at VH1-storytellers with a great intro about his time with Iggy in Berlin) - the link's defunct by now
- 6 days left: LIVE ON MARS (Live - last performance)
- 5 days left: STARMAN (Live 1972)
[in the comments: a link to an asteroid named after Bowie]
- intermission on the countdown: HEROES partly sung in German (from the soundtrack to "Christiane F.")
[in the comments: Tony Visconti's Making-of of the song Heroes]
- 4 days left: SENSE OF DOUBT (Live on German TV 1978)
[in the comments: a link to the part of the movie "Christiane F.", where this song is played]
- 3 days left: WHERE ARE WE NOW?
- 2 days left / his Birthday: AS THE WORLD FALLS DOWN (from the movie "Labyrinth")
- 1 day left: QUICKSAND (Live duet with Robert Smith at his birthday-concert exactly 22 years before that day 1997)
- the day: MY DEATH (Live 1973)
- the day after: LAZARUS (official video)

“The essential doesn't change.” Beckett

bought this lp at a thrift store a long time ago and made the rookie move of not checking the vinyl. When I got home I discovered it was a cracked & warped copy of Purple Rain. Finally pulled the trigger & got it on cd. It is a classic. MJP, I know reggae but I don't KNOW reggae. I'm beginning to take a deep dive. Suggestions?

I know that some people find reggae monotonous and it all sounds the same to them (hello Justine and Jordan!), but really, recommending reggae is like recommending rock and roll. Like, what do you want today, some Chuck Berry, Fleetwood Mac, or Metallica?

There are only a couple of reggae songs on that The Harder They Come album. The rest of the songs are ska from the 60s or ballads. In other words, the reggae equivalent of Chuck Berry and Fleetwood Mac.

Having said that, if you want to know when the golden age of reggae was, I'd say the period of 1973 to 1979/80. If you like sounds that are a little more basic or low-fi, you can go back to 1970. But before that you're getting into ska times. And after 1980 or so synthesizers, samplers, and computers came onto the scene, and those electronic rhythms changed reggae into something else completely, and it's been stuck in that dancehall kind of style ever since.

Anyway, it depends on what you like. But anything recorded in Jamaica in that period of the 70s is a good bet to be at least interesting if not inspirational, motivational, and rootical.

Or, you know, you could start with these mainstream selections available on 8-Track at your local minimart: